I laid out because of the dental work, but I’ll tell you, I had a moment in the garden that machine pretty well paid for itself. One of those nasty things that happens to you as you get older is that where YOU think you’ve lifted your feet to is not where you’ve REALLY lifted your feet to…meaning you can misstep or trip much more easily, particularly if you’re out of shape.

Well, there’s this rock—must be somebody’s escaped pet rock, because it almost daily turns up on the garden path, and this time it was complicated by a looped back garden hose and a prone but branchless extracted oak sapling we decided to replace with a dogwood.

I hit the damn rock, lost my balance, and as you may recall, our garden paths have basalt chunks as edges, so if you’ve run out of gravel walkway, you have to step over that and hope not to put your foot in a hole under the juniper branches…I lost my balance and did a zig-zag dance over obstacles vaguely like NFL trainees over a course of tires. Unscathed.

Exercise may cause pain—but it can save you from it. Couldn’t have done that a week ago, and those basalt chunks are sharp, nasty things to hit on landing. I am happily continuing on the exercise thingie.